PCs look to take Eglinton-Lawrence from long-time Liberal MPP

TORONTO — It was midweek in Toronto’s Eglinton-Lawrence riding, and the battle of the barbecues was heating up.

At a local community centre, a man played the accordion and sang in Italian as Progressive Conservative star candidate Rocco Rossi shook hands and posed for pictures with about 200 party faithful who filled their plates with grilled chicken and sausages, salad, watermelon and corn on the cob.

Just one subway stop to the south, Liberal MPP Mike Colle and a small army of volunteers took up position in a strip mall parking lot at the Marlee-Ville Festival and Street Party. They served free hotdogs to a line of hungry families as a four-piece jazz band bopped in the background.

At both events, NDP candidate Gerti Dervishi appeared in the crowd to shake hands and to size up his competition.

But these cheery summer scenes were undercut with political posturing, in the riding northeast of downtown Toronto where the PCs are looking to gain ground at the expense of the long-time Liberal MPP.

According to the Rossi camp, Colle’s festival appearance was a hastily assembled event meant to coincide with the PC barbecue. “It’s very rare that business street parties happen midweek,” noted Rossi, during an interview in his campaign office the day before both events.

But, according to Colle, the Marlee-Ville festival happens every year, it was just a little bigger than usual this time.

Colle points out that Rossi’s barbecue is, coincidentally, in the same venue where he hosted his extremely successful annual barbecue in July. “I’ve never had so many people at my barbecue,” said Colle of his July 20 event, which he said hosted around 2,000 people. Though, the Rossi campaign says one of their volunteers checked out the Colle barbecue, and saw 200 people.

But this posturing is to be expected in what will be one of the most closely watched races in Toronto, as Ontarians prepare for the Oct. 6 election.

In February, PC leader Tim Hudak announced Rossi would run as the PC candidate in Eglinton-Lawrence, confirming weeks of rumours that the failed Toronto mayoral candidate and former national director of the Liberal Party was going to switch teams.

Ontario MPP for Eglinton-Lawrence Mike Colle stops for a barbecue break as he walks along Toronto's Eglinton Avenue on Wed. Aug. 17, 2001 in an event he organized to promote a light rail transit project under the street. iPOLITICS/Emily Senger

Now Rossi is spreading the PC message of change, fair taxation and fiscal responsibility. Along with his campaign volunteers, Rossi said he has knocked on every door in the riding at least once, and the team has spoken to 11,000 people directly.

“We have three levels of government in Canada, but we only have one payer and that payer wants those levels of government to deliver value for Ontario,” Rossi told supporters at his barbecue during a stump speech, alternating between English and Italian.

The battle for Eglinton-Lawrence was already close in the 2007 Ontario election when Colle, who has been an MPP since 1995, won the riding by just over 2,000 votes, with 17,402 votes compared to 15,257 votes for PC candidate Bernie Tanz.

Municipally, the riding also skews partially conservative. It is represented by right-leaning Karen Stintz who is allied with Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, and by Josh Colle — a centrist first-term councillor who is also Mike Colle’s son.

Federally, the long-time Liberal riding went Conservative in May, when Joe Oliver took the seat from incumbent Liberal MP Joe Volpe, winning the race by 4,062 votes.

This election, said Rossi, is a chance to get things done by electing conservatives at all three levels of government.

“In a time when people are looking for co-ordinated action by governments, I think it’s actually a good thing to think of alignment of political ideology,” Rossi said from his campaign office. “That’s going to mean that governments are going to have one less excuse for not delivering for taxpayers.”

Rossi has some big-name supporters to help get this message across.

At Rossi’s barbecue Toronto Coun. Doug Ford, brother to Mayor Rob Ford, made an appearance, as did deputy PC deputy leader Christine Elliott, who called Rossi the PC Party’s “bright and shining star.”

Ford said he first met Rossi during the mayoral leadership campaign and he liked him, even though he was running against his brother. He now supports Rossi and he plans to attend as many PC events as possible to support government that, he thinks, will get the province’s debt under control.

“I am pushing for a PC government,” said Ford after speaking to the crowd at the Rossi barbecue. “Our family has been conservatives our whole lives. My dad sat with Mike Harris. There is no secret that we’re very staunch fiscal conservatives.”

Support for a provincial conservative victory in October is also coming from the federal level. In a YouTube video posted on Aug. 3 — which disappeared the next day — Prime Minister Stephen Harper appeared at a barbecue hosted by the Ford family, urging conservatives to “complete the hat trick” in the Ontario provincial election.

While conservative supporters are banding together so, too, are Liberals, said Colle, as he sipped a bottle of water in an Italian café near his campaign office.

In their own door-knocking campaign, Colle said he, and his volunteers, are hearing that constituents are wary of electing conservativea at all levels of government. He sees it an issue that is galvanizing Liberal supporters.

“There is a much higher level of interest, of passion, this time than, certainly, I have seen in two or three elections,” Colle said.

This is the fifth provincial campaign for Colle. He’s hearing about some of the same issues as in previous years, notably the long-running efforts to build an underground transit line through the south end of the riding, a project that was canned by the Harris government in 1995, but currently has municipal and provincial support.

Running against a high-profile candidate like Rossi also makes things different.

“Before, I’ve had opponents, but I’ve never had opponents who have activated my supporters, or activated people in the community,” he said. “It’s not just Liberals, I find I’m getting a lot of small-C conservatives, and NDP types, who are saying, ‘we don’t want to go that direction. We don’t want to go to the far right. We want to protect public services, we want good public transit.’”

Further on the left, political newcomer and NDP candidate Gerti Dervishi is expected to pick up some votes in the riding. The 30-year-old engineer and project manager says he was inspired to run after working on a contract for the Ministry of Health. Plus, his girlfriend works for NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo.

He knows he’s up against two candidates with years of experience and deep pockets, but he plans to shake a lot of hands and attend community events to get his name out there.

“We will run just as quality of a campaign at one-fifteenth the cost,” said Dervishi.

But the real battle is between Colle and Rossi.

And the winner might just be indicative of whether Ontario voters are looking for political change, or are dissuaded by the prospect of a shift to the right.